The LOST Interrobang: ¡WTH! (S6E9)
Posted on 25. Mar, 2010 by theashcan in Television, The Lost Interrobang
"OKOK IT'S NOT HELL RELAX"
Knowing that the ingredients for a good LOST episode is a healthy mix of “!!” and “??” Jef and Anupa will be interrobanging the show’s final season every week. As LOST winds down to its conclusion, can its creators dish out all the needed explanations without resorting to exposition? Can they keep up the mystery without succumbing to just more mindfuckery?
Este episodio fue sobre todo en español! Increíble. Perdóneme si esto no tiene sentido. Por último, tenemos un episodio sobre Richard. Estaba lleno de disfraces y el romance y la muerte y la lucha! Can’t ask for much more than that. Apologies if that was all nonsense. I can barely speak English. Two warnings! SPOILERS and RELIGIOUS TALK after the jump:
Anupa: The opening scene reminded me of “Are You Afraid Of The Dark?”
Jef: Haha yes, yo that is in my notes.
Anupa: THIS IS WHY WE’RE FRIENDS.
Jef: I thought this was going to be Campfire Story Episode.
I’m glad it wasn’t.
Anupa: I’m not.
I mean I am, but for kitsch-factor, I’m not.
Jef: I think the nod to it was good enough for me.
I loved that shot of Richard in the shadows away from the group.
Anupa: As did I. It was a nice, simple way of setting up a relatively simple episode.
Simple in terms of how it was told.
Jef: Did you love his giggle?
My other note was “giggle was so awesome.”
Anupa: What giggle? I may have been coughing and missed it or some shit.
Jef: Oh Ilana turns to him like “this dude has the answer.”
And he just giggles
like “wtf.
No I don’t.”
Maybe it was only awesome to me.
It reminds me of the giggle I do when interviewing rappers.
Anupa: HAHA, I know that giggle from having transcribed your interviews.
Jef: Haha
Ok so yo, this episode was mad different, for a lot of reasons.
Did you like that it was 1 hour of full-time Richard fest?
Anupa: I did enjoy the Richard-fest. For multiple reasons: 1) It gave his story the time it deserves, 2) It was satisfying, 3) It was a nice break from a narrative we don’t yet understand (flash-sideways).
Your thoughts?
Jef: Yeah I liked it for a grip of reasons but most of all because it gave Richard the most heartbreaking reason possible for being immortal.
I like this show cuz it’s so fucking nuts with the genre-play but in the end it’s about the characters.
Anupa: It’s true.
I feel you on that, Richard’s always come across as straight business but in this episode we got to see a whole ‘notha side of him.
And not that we didn’t like him before, but I think that we got both context and made huge gains in character development in this episode. So we got a delicious cake and were able to eat it as well.
Jef: And eat it for a whole fucking hour, Mandarin buffet style.
Anupa: (What I dig about Mandarin is the variety of foods; it’s not just Chinese, you can get sushi, fries and pizza up in that bitch.)
Jef: Haha yeah it’s like I’m gonna have some fries with this california roll, what?
On some screenwriter shit this episode impressed me too, because this was technically the mid-point of the season, and on that Shakespeare tip this is exactly where shit starts getting real and they lived up to that.
They switched up the story structure, they upped the stakes with Jacob’s wine bottle/evil metaphor, so much good shit.
Anupa: Don’t forget all of the biblical stuff.
Which largely goes over my heathen head, but whatever, I respect it and get it to an extent.
Jef: They do it enough to make us feel it, but yeah the great part is that it’s not really the point of the show.
In the end, the point of the show is these people are damaged and we love them and holy shit submarine! Etc.
Anupa: Ahh periscope!
But yes, which I why I love our non-intense method of interrobanging. It’s for the everyman.
The everyman like Richard, who has always came off as this mega-classy dude with his crisp shirt-tucked-into-pants ensemble but was actually once a field labourer.
With a hot wife.
Jef: And chained wrists that looked like beef jerky.
Ok yo that scene where he was trying to escape from the chains
Where he dropped the nail and the boar fucked shit up for him –
Anupa: The boar was nasty. No wonder certain cultures don’t like to eat pigs: ol’ people-eating-fuckers.
Jef: Hey, for all we know people are delicious!
Anupa: How could we not be? But the point is he’s trying to fuck with the stat quo of the food chain. That shit is not on.
Anyway, what about that scene?
Jef: Oh I was saying — couldn’t Rich have reached the nail with his feet??
Them shits were not chained down.
Anupa: LOLOLOL THAT’S EXACTLY WHAT I SAID TO HANNAH (editor: the all-caps ROOMATE).
Jef: Dammit Lost, why can’t you just make an episode perfect!
Anupa: I KNOW!
That was so frustrating. YO GUY, JUST TURN AROUND.
Jef: This guy trying to grab it with his lips. smh.
Anupa: It made me feel less sorry for him, just for a second.
He should’ve tried his eyelashes.
Jef: Yeah. Rich barely even has lips. Bad strategy all around.
Anupa: Okay, so we got some cool stuff earlier in the episode: the captain of the Black Rock was Magnus Hanso, who is obviously an ancestor of Alvar Hanso (Dharma), like everyone thought, Richard was a slave on the Black Rock, we find out the ship crashes into the statue and that’s why it’s reduced to just a foot, Jacob brings the ship to the Island…
Why do you think the Smoke Monster chose to “save” or “confront” Richard instead of fucking him up?
I mean, there are some interesting parallels we can make here with Locke, because the same thing happened to him…
Jef: I think he’s looking to prey (<–zing!) on people of faith.
Like he knows those are the only ones he might actually be able to manipulate.
Which worked out with Ben
eventually
like bajillions of years later.
Anupa: *hands Smoke Monster a late pass*
Jef: lol
Then again though
he did eat Eko.
Anupa: Right, which I was just thinking about. That’s a continuity error.
Well not really continuity, but whatevs.
Okay so Richard–err sorry, Ricardo (YO WHY’D HE HAVE TO GO ANGLICIZE HIS NAME LIKE DAT?) links up with Man In Black whose name we still don’t know yet.
And MIB gives Richard the same advice about killing Jacob that we’ve heard given to two different people on two different sides: Dogen told Sayid to stab Smocke with the same (?) knife and not let him say anything beforehand.
And Smocke had previously sent Ben to kill Jacob in the same way… i.e. the man under the statue.
I’m kind of interested in the “don’t let him say anything” part… at first I thought it was some kind of weird supernatural thing, but now, obviously, it’s got to be the fact that everyone understands the power of the other’s (haha) ability to convince.
Jef: Yeah, if we go on some Yin/Yang tip we could go so far as to say both sides are equally valid.
It might not even be that either/or is mad manipulative, maybe it’s just that both are right.
Anupa: Well, that’s what I’m being more and more convinced of.
You know that I haven’t been sold on the idea that Jacob is good and Smokey is bad.
Just because one seems a little bit more malevolent than the other…
but Jacob brings people to the island to be pawns in his little game with Smokey.
Jef: True and to be honest, for the show to end on either side, aligning with faith or free will, either would piss a lot of people off and worse, be on some BSG bullshit.
To do justice to the show, the characters would have to more right than anyone, and have to grow and learn from what they’ve been through.
Anupa: And by not letting them leave (incl. Smokey), and just keeping them hanging around /tied to the island, he’s trying to subvert something that’s perceived as evil but is actually necessary and real: death.
Right: the ending would have to be about the original characters’ will, not about Jacob/Smokey.
Jef: Lol I know we are getting into some non-funny territory, but you’re right. One of things I felt about this episode was that it wasn’t on some good/evil determination/freewill steez, but that Smokey actually seemed to represent Judeo-Christian thought, and Jacob was on some eastern Zen stuff.
That whole thing about “why can’t people know to be good, I shouldn’t have to tell them” falls in line with a lot of Buddhism, especially Zen.
Anupa: (Hence also the denial that he is the “devil”–a typically monotheistic belief.)
Jef: Exactly.
That’s why he was so amused by the whole thing.
And the dunking in the water, while asshole-ish, was a good way to bring Richard into the present moment, reality, aka enlightenment.
Anupa: Well that, yes. But it is also a supremely Christian thing too… Baptism?
But I like that you saw it a different way than I did. And probably most of the audience.
Jef: True true, and it recalls Claire’s baptism.
But this one was way less…nice
Anupa: …almost forced?
Jef: And Zen teachers have a history of being assholes about everything.
But you’re right, I’m reading into it from my perspective just as everyone else is from theirs.
Anupa: But it is a nice contrast and I dig that it still plays into what we are talking about, our own perspective.
Why do you think that Jacob can`t bring Richard salvation, bring his wife back, but he can give Richard eternal life?
Does that have any Zen implications?
Jef: Definitely.
In Zen dead is dead and there is no such thing as heaven or salvation.
Anupa: Right, from what I know of Buddhism that is what I am gleaning. This is so interesting!
Jef: But “living forever” can be a metaphor for living in the present, free from “the cycle of birth and death” etc.
Anupa: YES!
Okay lets talk about the wine metaphor?
Jef: I loved it! So perfect.
And it makes Smokey leaving seem that much more dangerous.
Anupa: RIGHT, but because I am still mistrusting of Jacob I kind of took it as propaganda.
I mean, it was all so easy and convenient and I bet it was an A-HA moment for a lot of viewers, but that is exactly why I dont know if I trust it…
It is too neat…
Jef: I feel you — I feel like the show needed something like that though, to give all of this a sense of urgency.
It could be wrong.
But it was right that it happened, if that makes sense.
Anupa: Well yes, because it was a great light-bulb moment.
Jef: What did you think of Jacob? He was much more of a character in this one.
Kind of a douchebag.
Anupa: Proving my theory…!
I mean, I kind of honestly do not understand why Richard came over to his side so easily?
Jef: This is interesting in what it says about us.
We’re suspicious of the other person. And I can’t articulate it right now, but I totally get why Rich picked the side he did.
Anupa: Well that is not helpful!
Jef: Haha!
Are you religious?
Haha you don’t have to answer that.
…
Did Anupa just disappear?
Anupa was a ghost
omg
Anupa: I am wearing a white sheet right now (no KKK-o)
No, I am not.
Speaking to organized religion specifically: I just cannot wrap my head around the idea that we are all stuck on this planet together and have to choose between so many paths to salvation, and that choosing between these paths, or just the fact that these paths exist, would cause so much bad stuff to happen.
Jef: (haha damn)
Anupa: I believe in morality, but I don’t think it necessarily has religious implications. Unless I guess you count karma.
Jef: Well there you go though — that kinda touches nicely on why I would have chosen Jacob as well and why I got Rich’s decision.
Jacob didn’t offer salvation.
He offered him a job.
You know?
Anupa: Right, it’s something he can go on.
Jef: He’s like, “I can’t save you man.” And that’s real talk.
Did you like the ghost scene at the end?
And by ghost scene, I mean Ghost scene
with Hurley as Whoopi Goldberg.
Anupa: I am singing Unchained Melody right now
Give me a minute…
Jef: to sing?
awesome
Anupa: Yes.
Okay.
Sorry, that movie gets me sometimes… I always need a second when I think about it.
Anyway, okay so I was kind of creeped out by Hugo talking to no one on the beach.
But then when I found out it was Hisa-bel
it was all good.
I mean, whatever it takes to keep Richard going you know?
Jef: It was sweet.
I’m just glad they didn’t go full-Ghost and have Hurley stroking Rich’s face.
Anupa: I also liked that we got to see Hurley speaking Spanish.
Jef: Yes! This episode was hell of Telemundo.
Anupa: It was a nice Hispanic quadrangle there, instead of that gringo shit ju know?
*edit to triangle
Jef: Lol i laughed at the triangle thing even though I didn’t really get it.
Anything we missed?
Anupa: I dont think so.
Jef: Yeah, nothing left in my notes except hearts.
Anupa: In honour of this Latinific episode, I give it an inverted interrobang
ole¡
Jef: Haha okay I think I will end it there.
Anupa: thats raaacist
